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Profile

Dewey knew he wanted to be an engineer when he came to WVU from Emporium, PA.  Originally he thought about Civil Engineering and then Aerospace Engineering.  He eventually decided on Industrial Engineering because he liked the process focus.  He also liked the many different career opportunities he would have with an IE degree.

After receiving his IE degree in 1972, Dewey went on to the Wharton School of Business, one of the top business schools in America for an MBA.  His focus was on Operations Management and Finance.  Dewey comments that the course work challenges at Wharton weren’t that different from WVU, but the support for students wasn’t what he found at WVU.

Dewey joined the Xerox Corporation when he graduated from Wharton.  He started in financial/business analysis.  In this position, his primary focus was product and market planning and forecasting.

Dewey credits a lot of his success to his ability to develop people and teams.  One of his major responsibilities in this development was the creation of highly effective teams and organizations.  As he built his teams, he specifically looked for individuals who had the knowledge needed as well as behaviors centered around four criteria:

  • Excellence in meeting objectives and goals
  • Persistence in meeting customer needs
  • Integrity in everything
  • Compassion showed to customers and peers

You really need to be able to read people through listening and understanding their perspectives.

One of things that Dewey feels that every engineering graduate needs to be able to do is to deal with conflicting requirements.  This requires being able to work with others to identify how they view tradeoffs. “You really need to be able to read people through listening and understanding their perspectives,” Dewey says.

During Dewey’s career at Xerox, he saw the company change from a copier company to a document management company.  His Industrial Engineering background was very helpful in envisioning the changes necessary in transitioning his organizations to support these changing objectives.  Dewey credits his education at WVU as being the critical foundation for his career.

Dewey is married and has two sons both with engineering degrees.  Dewey retired from Xerox in 2012 and lives in Nashville, TN.

Bio

Dewey Boswell has over 35 years of diversified experience and success in general management, sales and marketing management, strategic planning, and financial planning. His success was built on four values: excellence, persistence, integrity, and compassion. Strengths include:

  • Leadership    P&L responsibility
  • Customer focused    General Management
  • Employee satisfaction    Fiduciary Accountability
  • Results oriented    Global and domestic marketing

Prior to his retirement, he was Senior Vice President/General Manager for all Xerox solutions and services for all graphic communications accounts in US Operations, and select major accounts on a national and global basis. He was responsible for the global P&L performance of this select group of major accounts. These accounts were covered by 16 Global and National Account Managers and six (6) Global Account General Account Managers. The total number of employees in the organization was 110, responsible for the delivery of $600M in annual revenue. Performance in this market was determined by a combination of revenue and profit growth and gross margin improvement. Success in this market was the result of structuring the organization around customer requirements, providing focused and involved leadership, enabled by realistic, yet aggressive, expectations and empowering employees to achieve them. The outcome of his leadership was:

  • #1 in the nation in revenue and profit growth in 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007
  • #1 in the nation in retention in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007
  • #1 in employee satisfaction in 2000, 2003
  • Implemented new organization which reduced direct sales cost by 50%

He also managed Marketing, Pricing and Contracts for US Operations from 2008 – 2010.

He has an MBA degree from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from West Virginia University.

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